What I find lacking in Space Combat

[Malevolence]

ORIGINAL: Fishman

Anything BIGGER than that is simply a grandiose extragravance and an expression of your empire's pomposity....which, honestly, is sufficient reason to do it, but it's not really any more USEFUL.

Indeed. I don't think you get the economies of scale in DW building big ships that do it all... the way real world navies actually do (in peacetime).

[Fishman]

Real world navies are actually gigantic dinosaurian wastes of money. Turns out that those big expensive aircraft carriers they keep building are completely obsolete and the next time they get into a real shooting war, they're going to find out the hard way when their expensive multi-billlion-dollar carriers are sent to the bottom of the ocean by a few hundred retrofitted fishing boats and yachts with antiship missiles. Antiship missiles are disturbingly cheap and it only takes a few hits to turn your expensive multibillion carrier into an expensive scrap heap. They found this out in a wargames exercise a few years back. They weren't happy about this. The only reason those things stick around at all is because acknowledging their obsolesence and lack of relevance to modern warfare would cost thousands their jobs. The military is always ready to fight the last war. In WW2, they built these big impressive battleships...which were obsolete before the war began, and they had plenty of evidence to show this. Because of Aircraft Carriers. Now aircraft carriers are obsolete, and they're going to find this out in the next war.

[HsojVvad]

Don't forget, modern day aircraft carriers are not alone. There are many frigates and destroyers that surrond her. She is not alone. This is what MOO 3 tried to do in it's combat system.

I think I would appreciate combat more in DW if I knew what a range of 1000 is. If I knew what a speed of 800 is. Because of this, and I research new technology I don't see a difference in space combat with the newer techs.

So can the developers let us know what the distance of like 1000 actually is. Is 1000 a planetary scale, or system scale or Deep Space scale?

[Malevolence]

ORIGINAL: Fishman
... Turns out that those big expensive aircraft carriers they keep building are completely obsolete and the next time they get into a real shooting war, they're going to find out the hard way when their expensive multi-billlion-dollar carriers are sent to the bottom of the ocean by a few hundred retrofitted fishing boats and yachts with antiship missiles. ...

I don't disagree with your logic, but I note with some irony that they are in fact used in real shooting wars now and are quite useful (both militarily and diplomatically). If it was not for those gigantic aircraft carriers and their air wings those first few days in Afghanistan in October 2001 would have been far less healthy.

[Malevolence]

ORIGINAL: Davor

Don't forget, modern day aircraft carriers are not alone. There are many frigates and destroyers that surrond her. She is not alone. This is what MOO 3 tried to do in it's combat system.

I think I would appreciate combat more in DW if I knew what a range of 1000 is. If I knew what a speed of 800 is. Because of this, and I research new technology I don't see a difference in space combat with the newer techs.

So can the developers let us know what the distance of like 1000 actually is. Is 1000 a planetary scale, or system scale or Deep Space scale?

If you think of them in terms of RTS units, the detail becomes less important. I do notice many more laser bolts and torps and things appear to die much faster.

[Fishman]

ORIGINAL: Davor

Don't forget, modern day aircraft carriers are not alone. There are many frigates and destroyers that surrond her. She is not alone. This is what MOO 3 tried to do in it's combat system.

The frigates and destroyers are the useful ships. The carrier battlegroup as a unit is useless the moment the carrier goes down in flames, which is annoyingly easy to do when you have several hundred cheap missile launchers that attack from all sides at once.

ORIGINAL: Malevolence

I don't disagree with your logic, but I note with some irony that they are in fact used in real shooting wars now and are quite useful (both militarily and diplomatically).

Those aren't real shooting wars, those are police actions. We're talking about a real shooting war against an actual country that, perhaps while not a superpower, isn't impoverished. And just because something is obsolete, it does not mean it cannot be used. There are, however, far more cost effective ways of acccomplishing the same thing which are not obsolete.

ORIGINAL: Malevolence

I think I would appreciate combat more in DW if I knew what a range of 1000 is. If I knew what a speed of 800 is. Because of this, and I research new technology I don't see a difference in space combat with the newer techs.

It's a a range in Units. What the units are is unimportant because any unit chosen results in a very unrealistic picture. Using real units in a space game tends to make a very boring game.

[Impact1986]

this game needs to me more moddable. i would love to mod this game and improve it in that department

[BigWolfChris]

The ability for a ship to use a "Multi-Targeting" component would be awesome
Even with today's technology, an advanced fighter aircraft can lock onto multiple targets at once
So why can a ship that flies through space only shoot one target at a time?
With beam weapons... maybe, depending on if they are fixed mounted, or arcing turrents
But with torpedoes, if anything like today's ones, there targeting computers are build into the actual torpedo, with maybe the ship relaying updated information

[davidjruss]

What I find so frustrating about space combat in DW :-

1) Every military ship seems to close an enemy vessel to point blank range no matter what the combat setting , passing on opposite parallel courses

2) After passing an enemy ship a vessel takes forever to turn about and then it is a stern chase to catch up and in most cases the opposition vessel goes to hyperdrive before it can be caught

3)The fact that in combat , time is still incrementing , so you have the scenario where space combat can take a couple of months in DW time reach a conclusion and a vessel can take days to just turn around.

It seems to me that combat in DW needs a radical overhaul as it is just too frustrating at present.

DavidR

[HsojVvad]

Not sure if you know this David, but in the design screen, if you put more vertical thrusters on a ship, it will turn faster. Of course this will make the ship slower, so you have to put on more engines to make it go faster, but then causes your ship to turn slower. You have to try and find a good mix of what you like.

[mllange]

ORIGINAL: DavidR

...

3)The fact that in combat , time is still incrementing , so you have the scenario where space combat can take a couple of months in DW time reach a conclusion and a vessel can take days to just turn around.

It seems to me that combat in DW needs a radical overhaul as it is just too frustrating at present.

DavidR

A player can start, finish, and deploy several new destroyers from large space ports in the time a single combat is taking place.

[JonathanStrange]

I read one of those rare AARs that actually reach a conclusion despite having plenty of screenshots and text (see Octopus Overlords forum for the AAR) and space combat was a small part of the game until the very end. Even the player didn't build a single capital ship and apparently (aside from what was probably a recovered space hulk) neither did the AIs. Space Combat: all that crucial? is what I'm thinking.

Then when you add the feeling that bigger ships don't mean bigger ... fun (for lack of a better word). Just combat with bigger ships, no real sense of "now here comes the pain!"

[PDiFolco]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

ORIGINAL: PDiFolco
What's really lacking is some kind of rock-paper-scissors effects with different weapon/armor types, as it was in MoO, SE, etc... Shield-breaking weapons, weapons ignoring shields, targetting engines, power sources, psychic weapons, long range weapons, area weapons, missile defenses etc ... Currently we have guns that do 4 damage, then 6,8,12,16.. same for missiles, that's quite poor.

There are so many things that could still be done in terms of adding techs and interactions between techs and new design options. I agree, and there's a long road ahead. [8D]

Sure Erik
But in a 4X game, a well-designed and rich tech tree/components are of primary importance, improving this aspect should be a priority.